Call Me Fred
by RoxieFlash
Summary: Romana Tyler, aged 10 months, is a very clever little girl.


"Ro-ma-na."

The baby flicked peas at his face.

"Come on, now, you're such a clever girl. Ro-ma-na."

More peas, followed by a deftly-avoided scoop of mashed potatoes that just barely missed his hair. Romana Tyler, aged ten months, had only recently discovered that her father made the funniest faces when there was something in his hair, and had made a new habit of trying to get him to recreate them at every possible opportunity.

She was quite clever, little Romana. She could say _dada_ , and _mummy_, and _Ollie_, and she had only once accidentally called Uncle Mickey_ auntie_, which had set her father laughing so hard he'd flung them into the Vortex on accident. She slept through the night (when she wanted) and had already worked out how to get out of her crib (and often did) and into Auntie Donna's biscuits (which were on the top shelf) without anyone having a clue how she'd gotten up there.

This was all very normal for a little Time Lady, the Doctor mused, so why in the world wouldn't she say her own name?

She knew it, he could tell that much. She answered to it, lifted her head towards him and reached out with her mind when he said it aloud.

"Ro-ma-na."

She pushed mentally out towards him, her tiny mind forming a sensation universally recognized as _eugh._

"That is rubbish. Romana is a lovely name!" Her tiny face scrunched up at him, and the Doctor sagged forward on the kitchen table, squishing his cheek against one hand. "Seems you don't like it any better than she did."

"Doesn't like what any better than who did?"

Rose Tyler, love of his life, walked into the TARDIS kitchen in a ragged pair of jeans and a t-shirt that had probably had once had something printed on it, but now looked a bit singed.

He was going to have to have a talk with Ollie about pyrotechnics.

She settled, warm, into his lap, tucking her head under his chin and being inconsiderately cute as she snuggled her head into his side. He kissed her on the forehead.

"Romana. She doesn't seem to want to say her name."

"Doctor, she's not even a year old yet."

"Oh it's not that she can't, Rose Tyler," he said, slipping an arm around his wife's waist, tracing his fingertips along the edge where denim met her hip. "She doesn't want to," he tapped his temple. "Whole other difference."

"Wait, you gave our baby a name that her namesake didn't like? You didn't tell me that."

Rose looked cross. He didn't like it when Rose looked cross; it meant more yelling and less snuggling, and with the amount of time they spent apart, first from being trapped between universes and then sometimes being trapped between -children-, the Doctor had no patience for less time in his life spent snuggling Rose Tyler.

"Romana didn't like anything!" he exclaimed, his voice going high and squeaky. "She was the Time Lady equivalent of that pins and needles feeling when your leg goes asleep!"

He felt, irrationally, like he was being poked across the Time Lock by an unreasonable newly-graduated Academy fledgling in a ridiculous fluffy coat.

"And you -liked- this person?"

"Let me put it this way. When Donna first moved on board the TARDIS, I checked her luggage for pocketwatches."

He -had-. He'd only been a little disappointed, because Donna Noble was brilliant in her own right, and if Donna Noble was Donna Noble then in whatever counted for the Time Lord afterlife, where-ever she was, bloody Romana was laughing til her bypass kicked in.

It was an image that entertained him far more than he was willing to let on.

Rose was still looking at him as though he purposefully stuck their daughter with a name she would never enjoy.

"Rooooose," he said, his voice plaintive as he laid his head on top of hers. "Her full name was _Romanadvoratrelundar_."

"Bless you."

"She wanted me to say it every time. _Every time_, Rose. Can you imagine it? Romanadvoratrelundar, run! Romanadvoratrelundar, bring me that spanner! Romanadvoratrelundar, stop eating my jelly babies!"

Rose dissolved into a fit of giggles, covering them with her hand.

"And so you called her Romana instead, and she hated it?"

"Yep. She said she'd rather I called her Fred."

"Fred!"

The Doctor, up until that point, had assumed that his daughter was eating her dinner, which freed him to engage in a few Rose snuggles before he got up to finish his fatherly duties - baths and diaper changes and all that. When he looked up, he found her not eating, but using her mashed potatoes to fashion her red-gold hair into a spiky approximation of his own.

"Fred!" she said, slamming her hand down on the tray in front of her, like a decision had been made. "Fred! Fred!"

"C'mon Fred," said Rose, laughing and moving to extract her daughter from the high chair. "You need a bath."

Somewhere, somewhen, an unreasonable Academy fledgling in a stupid fluffy coat was laughing until her respiratory bypass kicked in.


End file.
